While blasting the government is nothing new for DeVos — critics see her as the most ideological and anti-public-education secretary in the Education Department’s 40-plus-year history — she gave what may be her fiercest anti-government polemic at the Hillsdale College event in her home state Monday.
She explained how her philosophy was formed by Abraham Kuyper, a neo-Calvinist Dutch theologian-turned-politician who was prime minister of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905 and who believed that Protestant, Catholic and secular groups should run their own independent schools and colleges. The United States could fix its education system, she said, if it were to “go Dutch” by embracing “the family as the sovereign sphere that it is, a sphere that predates government altogether.”
And she said that if given a second term as education secretary, she would keep pushing for alternatives to traditional public schools. (No surprise there.)
DeVos, the only Cabinet member in history to be confirmed only with the help of a vice president to break a Senate tie, also said at Hillsdale:
- “I assume most of you have never stepped foot inside the U.S. Department of Education. And I can report, you haven’t missed much. These past few years I’ve gotten a close-up view of what that building focuses on. And let me tell you, it’s not on students. It’s on rules and regulations. Staff and standards. Spending and strings. On protecting ‘the system.’ ”
- “At the end of the day, we want parents to have the freedom, the choices, and the funds to make the best decisions for their children. The ‘Washington knows best’ crowd really loses their minds over that. They seem to think that the people’s money doesn’t belong to the people. That it instead belongs to ‘the public,’ or rather, what they really mean — government.”
- “Many in Washington think that because of their power there, they can make decisions for parents everywhere. In that troubling scenario, the school building replaces the home, the child becomes a pawn and the state replaces the family.
- “Sadly, too many politicians heed the shrill voices of the education lobby and ignore the voices of children, parents, teachers and health experts who are begging to get our students back to learning.” [That’s a reference to her support for President Trump’s call for all schools to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic.]
- “From being an early force for abolition to turning away the government’s regulators to rejecting taxpayer subsidies, Hillsdale’s hallmark was, is and always will be independence. And though I always admired that independence, having been witness to the federal bureaucracy at work for nearly four years, I can tell you with certainty: Your decision to decline any help from Washington was wise then and is still wise today.”
The Detroit Free Press reported that after the forum, DeVos said that any succeeding administration in Washington will have to be careful about how it tries to change the things she has accomplished CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos, in anti-government polemic, says America’s public schools are designed to replace home and family - The Washington Post